English
Sotheby’s London closed its contemporary art evening sale on Thursday with a total of £46.1 million ($61.1 million), led by a Willem de Kooning abstraction that achieved £9.8 million ($12.9 million). The sale drew a full room but moved at a cautious pace, with extended silences and visible tension throughout. While 28 of 34 lots found buyers, the hammer total of £36.9 million fell short of the low pre-sale estimate of £41.7 million.
De Kooning Leads a Measured Evening
The top lot of the night was an untitled 1977 abstract painting by Willem de Kooning. Estimated at £8–12 million ($10.6–15.9 million), the five-foot-wide canvas hammered at £8.2 million and sold for £9.8 million ($12.9 million) with fees. The work last appeared at Sotheby’s New York in 2015, when it fetched $6.1 million.
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Gerhard Richter’s large-scale Abstraktes Bild (1992) ranked second. Estimated at £6–8 million, it hammered below estimate at £5.4 million, selling for £6.7 million ($8.9 million) with fees. The seller had originally bought the eight-foot-wide painting at Christie’s London in 2011 for £3.6 million.
A dark-hued Mark Rothko abstract from 1969 followed in third place. Estimated at £3–4 million, it hammered at its low estimate and sold for £3.8 million (just under $5 million) with fees. The seller had purchased the work at Christie’s New York in 1992 for just $264,000. Works by Georg Baselitz, David Hockney, Albert Oehlen, and Andy Warhol also featured in the top ten, with Baselitz, Hockney, and Warhol each appearing twice.
A Cautious Market with Selective Demand
Art historian and consultant Ivana Miloradovic described the mood at the sale as one of careful restraint. “I would say the market is very cautious,” she told ARTnews. Most lots, she noted, “either underperformed or were at the lower end.”
Several works failed to sell, including pieces by Banksy, Georg Baselitz, Jadé Fadojutimi, Lucian Freud, Gerhard Richter, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Three additional lots — by Damien Hirst, Anselm Kiefer, and Leon Kossoff — were withdrawn before the sale began. By comparison, last year’s equivalent Sotheby’s London sale totaled £47.6 million ($63.3 million), led by a Francis Bacon that fetched £13 million ($17.5 million).
Thursday’s sale took place during London fair week. The previous evening, Christie’s had posted a combined total of £218.6 million ($289.4 million) across two sales — more than double its result from the prior year. Meanwhile, celebrities including Tilda Swinton and designer Raf Simons attended the opening of Frieze, where dealers reported strong sales activity.
Michael Andrews Steals the Spotlight
One of the evening’s most striking results came from a work on paper by Michael Andrews (1928–1995). His Butterfly Fish (1978) carried a high estimate of just £120,000. However, after an extended bidding contest, it hammered at £550,000 and sold for £704,000 ($933,117) with fees. The result set a new auction record for a work on paper by Andrews.
Miloradovic highlighted the result as a reflection of strong local sentiment. “British sales on British soil are always joyous,” she said, also pointing to enthusiastic bidding for David Hockney’s 10th–22nd June 2021, Water Lilies in the Pond with Pots of Flowers (2021). “Everybody knows the artist, the gossip and the history. It was a homey atmosphere.”
Andrews remains less prominent than some of his School of London peers, such as Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. Nevertheless, his contemporaries held him in high regard. Fellow painter Frank Auerbach once said of Andrews: “Mike is so economical. He paints only masterpieces.”
Ottilie Windsor, head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s London, explained the scarcity of Andrews’s work on the market. “The paintings that he did make were often bought as they were being made by a group of collectors who followed his work really closely,” she told ARTnews. “They’ve never really needed to sell and so we get very, very low supply of his work to the market. When they do come up, they really do very well.”
Younger Artists Deliver Mixed Results
Among younger artists, results were uneven. Louis Fratino’s Kissing Couple (2019) sold within estimate for £320,000 ($424,144). Fratino currently has a sold-out show at David Zwirner’s London gallery. Similarly, Adrian Ghenie’s The Wall (2019) sold within estimate for £640,000 ($848,288). In contrast, works by Fadojutimi and Yiadom-Boakye found no buyers.
Despite the uneven performance, Windsor defended the overall outcome. “Any dealer at the fair would be thrilled to sell nearly 30 secondary market lots,” she said. She acknowledged that buyers remain selective, adding that the market “continues to surprise us with what it’s looking for.” Both interest and money are present, she argued — though neither is moving without careful consideration.
